If I had my way, I'd rock!

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South Bethany, DE stop sign

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The early morning surf as a very short movie: no actors, no plot, no music, just magic.

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Chesapeake Bay, July 2006

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She wrote: "I am being crushed by my unconsciousness; blinded by what I can not see; deafened by what I can not hear. I am smothered by all of the emptiness around me. Dearest Father, do not let me stay here alone."

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These are the bricks and this is the mortar. These are 40 elephants on my back.

These are the petals that point to Jerusalem. This is how daylight fades to black.

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The first thing that I noticed was that she was beautiful in a way that other fortune tellers/Tarot card readers I have met and consulted with were not. She was young, with strong features and knowing eyes. I felt drawn to her instantly and was compelled to place my quarters into the slot of the wood and glass box in which she was sitting. She looked at me intently and began to read the cards in front of her. I would, she told me, live a long, healthy life. I would have sufficient funds in my later years to travel at will. My wife would stay young and would adore me until the end. My son would grow up to be a captain of industry and would change the world as we now know it for the better. I would receive the recognition after my death that had escaped me in life. Wise people would speak my name with respect. The world will be a better place because I had lived in it. Well, I was speechless after she finished. This was more than I bargained for or even expected. It was, without a doubt, the best fortune that had ever been read to me. I felt as though I had received my money's worth.

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All the young Dudes....

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I love the boardwalk because it's so strange. Where else can you see stuff like this? Where else do humans walk around looking like that? Where else can you get a TUB of FRIED potatoes? Where else does the ice cream dripping down your hand taste like that? Only on the boardwalk and only in Summer.

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Overheard on the street:

1. "Code Red, baby! English birds be fallin' out of the sky, its so hot!"
2. "Oh great! Now everyone thinks they're in a movie!
3. "You shoulda told him what was on your mind. Now he'll think you're stupid."
4. "Ain't no water for the thirsty; ain't no comfort for the small."

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She said: "I can measure the number of friends and the number of family who have passed by the number of entries crossed out in my little address book. The first thing I do when I get bad news about someone I love is to cross their name out in my address book so that I don't forget and send a card or letter to someone who won't ever respond back to me. It's sad. I'm always sad to cross someone's name out. But it has to be done."

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Go ask Alice.

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He said: "The very first thing I wanted to do at University was to drop some LSD. The second thing I wanted to do was "do" mescaline and psilocybin. I wanted to get, I guess, connected to something, almost anything. I was, then, very removed from American life; it was too, what?, too crazy, too meaningless, to attached to buying and selling useless things. I thought, maybe, that I could talk to god about this. Needless to say, my first year was a little disoriented; I managed to keep up my grades, but when I wasn't in class, I was wasted. My sense of the word was altered and I "saw" things in a different, sometimes perplexing, way. That was what changed the most: the way I saw things, the way I see at all."

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He said: "Then I had the idea that if I studied while tripping and if I was tripping during the exam, then I would remember everything and ace the course, of course. It seemed like a rational way to approach higher education at the time. Of course, this theory didn't take into account that, under the influence, I could not see the book, let alone the words on the pages of the book. Also, I would forget why I was holding the book, and what IS a book anyway? The focus of my eyes and the focus of my intent just weren't there to do me any good. Naturally, this plan was not sustainable, and I didn't, in fact, ace the course."

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He said: "But, now, that's the way I see everything, mostly."

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She said: "I don't believe in God, but I still go to church. I like it. I like the quiet and the opportunity to contemplate and reflect. I like the company that a church or a place like that brings together. And, yes, I pray. But I pray for my own benefit. It's so that I can hear what my inner body has to say. Sometimes it's something that my conscious self isn't even aware of. So, I pray for the brave, but foolish people who go off to fight a war somewhere, and I pray for an answer. I pray to the strength to do the things that I know that I have to do. I pray for all the things that people who believe pray for. I just don't expect an answer."

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The floating world.

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"We'd like to welcome you to Tiny Tot airlines and hope that you will enjoy our flight to Toy Town. Please take this moment to check that your seat belt is buckled and that your seat is in an upright position. Please extinguish all smoking materials for takeoff. Our flight today will take us over Sugar Loaf Mountain. Keep your seat belts fastened until the pilot has given the signal that we have reached cruising altitude and that it is safe to release your seatbelt and walk around the cabin. Our flight to Toy Town will take approximately 55 minutes. Enjoy your flight."

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This is about waking from a dream.

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There are moments in a life that define what that life becomes from that point on. Sometimes there are simple things that become more important over time. Sometimes there are major events that suddenly shift a life into a place it would never otherwise see. For me, one of those moments happened in High School. It was in shop class probably in 10th grade. It seemed everyone boy either ended up in shop class or in automotive restoration, which meant taking a junker and turning it into a Hot Rod. Shop class was where you learned to build a small book case, but you started out with building a simple wooden lamp. On the first day of class there was chaos as the shop teacher tried to figure out who was who and where they would sit and who would be the dud and who would build a world class bookcase. While all of this was going on, we were allowed to explore the shop class classroom which was filled with wood and various power tools, including saws. A kid I barely knew, but recognized as a trouble maker, turned on the band saw and found a block of walnut which he then proceeded to make progressively smaller. I was standing behind him, observing. As a piano student, I didn't want to be the first to "handle" any moving saw blade. As it turned out, this was a very good strategy and eventually offered the teacher a teaching point, because the bored walnut band saw chopper momentarily lost track of where his fingers and wood were. Perhaps he was distracted by some noise or by looking for a pal to witness his walnut sawing abilities. All I know is that he turned around to face me, holding his right hand up. I saw that his index finger was missing. There was just a stump of a finger there. But, at least for a moment, there wasn't any blood, so I wasn't too concerned. I thought, maybe, it was a trick of some kind. But, no, then the blood came out is a gush and everyone, it seemed, started screaming. I must have been one of the screamers, but I don't remember that part. The walnut sawing kid was rushed to the nurses office by the teacher, who came back to look for the sawed off finger shortly afterward. We were all ordered to sit at our tables and the electricity to the tools was turned off. I knew, at that moment, that I would never make it as a carpenter and that I would avoid power tools for the rest of my life. The lamp I make in that class was glued not nailed, together, and my bookcase fell apart.

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This, too, is about Dreaming.

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